Wednesday, 18 July 2012

Mr Pilger

At uni this year I've come across a few figures that I've come to have massive amounts of respect and admiration for. Jane Austen is one, who I blogged about here, but the newest addition to my list of inspiring figures is John Pilger. Though he has been around for a long time, it is only recently that I've actually read and researched his work. A paper I'm doing this semester uses his book Tell me no lies as its set textbook so I'm learning quite a bit about his career.

As someone studying Journalism, he is the ultimate. His investigative reporting focuses on foreign policy and has covered Cambodia, Australia, East Timor, Palestine, Diego Garcia, the USA and numerous other nations. In a class last semester we watched a snippet of his doco Stealing a Nation about Diego Garcia. It struck a chord with me for some reason and got me interested in his work. Youtube it if you want to see an example of shocking injustice that has slipped by relatively under the radar.

I also like that Pilger uses the quote by George Orwell regarding how censorship in free societies is infinitely more sophisticated and thorough than in dictatorships because "unpopular ideas can be silenced and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for an official ban" as inspiration for his work. His dedication to exposing injustices is remarkable and I have the utmost admiration for him.